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The End Of The Karl Rove Death Grip Signals A Reagan Renaissance

Karl Rove, former Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Liberals do not grasp the distinction between Ronald Reagan and (either) George Bush. This blind spot creates a massive confusion and hazard to their ambitions. Obama defeated neither the Reagan Narrative nor Team Reagan. Team Bush appropriated, and then marginalized, both. Obama beat Team Bush, not Team Reagan. The implications are huge.

There was a touchy relationship between President Reagan and his Vice President George H.W. Bush. They were rivals during the primaries. Bush attacked the Reagan economic agenda as “voodoo economics.” Bush served faithfully as VP for eight years but Reagan and Bush never warmed to one another. There was precious little rapport between the populist figures populating the Reagan circle and the Eastern establishment retinue of the son of the patrician Sen. Prescott Bush.

When George H.W. Bush’s turn came he talked like Dirty Harry, “Read my lips. No new taxes.” When the moment of truth came, George H.W. Bush blinked, raising taxes. His presidency was liquidated by the perfect storm of a Reaganite base revolted by the abandonment of a solemn campaign pledge plus a tax-increase induced recession. Bush pere was a conservative and a very decent man. He was hornswoggled by elegant Mandarins like Dick Darman.

George W. Bush, as good as, and more conservative than, his father, was hornswoggled too. He campaigned on the theme of “compassionate conservatism.” That phrase, like his father’s “kinder and gentler nation”, implied a certain pitilessness in Reagan conservativism. The implications complied with the liberal caricature of Reagan. Pitilessness, however, reflected neither the self-concept of most Reagan loyalists nor our splendidly humanitarian outcomes (such as the dramatic reduction of the Misery Index). Real conservatives saw Reaganomics as a way of creating broad-based opportunity, not as catering to the rich. It worked out exactly that way … in America and throughout the world. The blossoming of free market principles — especially low tax rates and good money — brought billions of souls out of poverty, from subsistence to affluence.

In an intraparty succession barely noticed by the mainstream media the Bush forces supplanted the Reagan forces within the GOP. Keepers of the Reagan legacy tended to end up at positions of respect and influence within the conservative movement. For example Reagan intimate, counselor, and attorney general Edwin Meese III long has held a prestigious office with the Heritage Foundation, the flagship of the Washington conservative establishment. Even though Meese was a General in the Reagan Revolution, though, his influence on a Bush cohort-dominated GOP — one that chiseled Reagan onto Rushmore while ignoring Reagan’s philosophy — is constrained.

Mandarins of the Bush (pere and fils) cohort sought and received mere token presence in the conservative establishment. They sought, and achieved, rather, vast influence in the Republican Party. Mandarin Karl Rove, comrade of Bush pere’s campaign guru Lee Atwater, became the dominant partisan figure.

The enormity of (and surprise at) the defeat of Romney is a huge setback — and perhaps fatal — to the Bush Mandarins’ hegemony over the GOP. If so, the potential re-ascendency of the Reagan wing of the GOP will prove very bad news for liberals and excellent news for the Republican Party. The Reagan wing now can resurge. A resurgence already has begun.

Many of the same Mandarins that delivered a stagnant economy to President(s) Bush had a hand, directly or indirectly, in misguiding McCain, and then Romney, to resounding defeat. This catastrophic performance may discredit, permanently, Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, among others, with the donors. The Mandarins’ Svengali-like power over the donors was the major source of their power. If even a substantial minority of the donors are fed up with Rove it will open the field for a generational change in party leadership … and direction.

The Reagan Renaissance

Dislodging the death grip of Karl Rove from its throat would put a new generation of political leaders in charge of the Republican Party. The new conservative Republican leaders are strikingly formidable. The leaders of the new generation, like Reagan, and Kemp, before them (and Kennedy still earlier), all recognize the power of the “rising tide lifts all boats”.

The Reagan campaign ethos was distinct from the tactics of “naked cruelty” perfected by Bush pere’s political gunslinger Lee Atwater. (Atwater, may he rest in peace, publicly repented and apologized to his victims before his tragic, untimely, death). Yet the politics of naked cruelty were transmitted into the political culture by Atwater’s comrade, Rove, and his doppelganger on the Left, David Axelrod.

And both the Bush Mandarins and Obama Consiglieres have complemented their politics of naked cruelty with policies of economic stagnation. A Reagan Renaissance promises to restore a political culture of hardball political decency, economic growth, and conservative values.

Eight Republican Reagan Renaissance Men are entering their prime. Removing Rove’s death-grip on the party, with party donors now freed to pursue principled victory rather than a prestige brand name, the Reagan Revolution now can morph into a Reagan Renaissance.

The Reaganesque Governors

Mike Pence was just elected governor of Indiana. Full disclosure: this columnist headed up a tiny superPAC whose mission was to persuade Pence to run in 2012. Many consider Pence to be Reagan 2.0. He certainly is a figure who demonstrated extraordinary, perhaps unique, moral courage (and great judgment) in a lonely opposition to Rove when Rove was at his peak of power. Politico, on the unsuccessful effort to sweep Pence onto the 2012 board:

“If he does run, it’s clear that Pence would particularly appeal to an element of the GOP that has always resisted the establishment and been wary of the Bush crowd — the kinds of conservatives who originally preferred Jack Kemp over the elder Bush.

“And at a moment of pronounced regret among GOP and tea party activists about the expansion of government that took place under George W. Bush, Pence’s distance from that brand is seen as an unalloyed asset.

“’I don’t know of anybody else [in the field] who stood up to Karl Rove,’ said Benko, touting Pence’s opposition to No Child Left Behind, the costly prescription drug benefit and TARP. ‘He has fought for fiscal restraint harder than anybody I know.’”

Pence, however, has a worthy gubernatorial rival for the Reagan mantle. Sam Brownback is a dazzlingly Reaganesque success as governor of Kansas. Brownback just implemented the largest income tax cut in Kansas history. At the same time, he reversed a $500 million deficit into a $500 million surplus, reducing the size of state government by 4,000 positions. Brownback’s state budget director, Steve Anderson, is pioneering a method of accounting that holds government programs accountable for their cost-effectiveness — just like private sector companies have to be. He’s posted it to the Kansas Budget Director’s Office website for the world to emulate. This is revolutionary.

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This op-ed is nothing more than a PR position piece for the purpose of damage control.

As long as the GOP stays mum on Constitutional POTUS ineligibility via “gentlemen’s agreement”, and the silent coup of criminal and recidivist voter fraud by the impotent liberal socialists (aka role models for CHEATERS or “How to slip through the cracks and obtain Power”), they will merely be strawmen, dupes, and wimps.

To be terse, the GOP in toto, are unpatriotic embarrassments and HYPOCRITES who lack integrity.

They got what they deserve by lying by omission.

Obama is a dangerous dictator whose mens rea is to convert America into a Socialist Bloc Country, all the while secreting billions in offshore accounts for his lifetime retirement. (read: www.thewhitehats.com and their 47 soon to be 48 reports)

He is a creation of the CIA, as was Bush 41 (Russ Baker “Family of Secrets”) Obama’s mother was CIA, along with his grandparents. Andrew Basiago, a highly credentialed attorney even claims Obama and himself participated in a CIA-DARPA time travel “Jump” to Mars. Perhaps, that is the origin of Obama’s deep head scars.

Until the GOP comes clean: exposes ineligibility, exposes voter fraud, exposes massive corruption of money hungry power players including Grover Norquist within their spider web, they will have no more respect than the INSANE nitwits in the Democratic party, from Pelosi to Moron (I mean Moran), to Jackson Lee, to Wasserman Schultz, to Reid to Schumer, and soon, Liz “Native” Warren.

Your intention is well-meaning, but it will take a village to convince libertarians of your lofty goals for a defunct party who dumps conservatives in primaries and elevates a closet liberal from Massachusetts.

This paean to Ronnie Reagan is probably the funniest thing I’ll read today.

Reagan isn’t coming back. His economic policies were fully implemented to the hilt under Bush and we saw the country plunged into a near-Depression as a result. Reaganomics produced a massive deficit and Bushism just made it worse. Moreover, the blind greed and selfishness of the Reagan years ruined a generation and dismantled American progress toward greatness.

The memory of Reagan is warning for those of us who remember those embittered years and we will do well to never emulate them again.

Here’s a newsflash for you. Reagan presided over tax increases in 7 of his 8 years as president (mainly for the middle class, not the wealthy), and he tripled the deficit during his time in office. So much for Reagan’s “tax-cutting” accomplishments.

He was also a true believer in “trickle-down economics” whereby wealth lavished on the already wealthy will “trickle-down” over the upraised hands and faces of the poor masses yearning for a few crumbs.

It didn’t work then, and it’s been tried again since then (Bush II) and failed as well. It doesn’t work. Period. When will you grasp this reality? Why are Republicans always such deniers of reality? It’s the one major fault that is going to doom them to the dark annals of American history.

Democrats are wishing this is so. The mythology of Reagan was the beginning of the end for the GOP. Reagan is as ancient history as the Incas. Some will be fooled all the time, but not enough to win anything but the election for local dog catcher.

Although I cheer the end of Karl Rove’s influence, if that’s what really happens, I believe Reagan’s legacy–or at least his history–has been greatly distorted. Even American Heritage magazine when owned by Forbes called him “overrated.” For an alternative take on the reality of the Reagan years, check out my Forbes.com post at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/craigsilver/2011/06/30/many-recall-life-under-ronald-reagan-as-mourning-in-america/

I don’t know what part of this article excites me more, getting rid of Karl the Rove, or supporting Mike Pence as our next Republican nominee. I so truly hope that we can and do realize that we must cover all of Reagans conservative planks. For those that wanted to put the social issues on the back burner, and run away from them, I hope they found out the hard way that where you leave message vaccums, the liberals will most definitely step forward to fill the void and they did. Binders of women, birth control, tampons, vaginas in costume, and of course the new spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Sandra Fluke. By the time this idiot Obama gets done with us, we will be lucky if we are not bombed into radical islamic submission, or nuked by the nutjob in Iran.

I absolutely adore Mike Pence. Did I tell you I love Mike Pence. Pence/Rubio 2014, if we have a country left for them to take over.

My understanding is that Senator DeMint is considering a run for the presidency in 2016, which would coincide nicely with his self-imposed term limits. So I don’t know about the author’s reference to DeMint as merely an “elder statesman.”

Moreover, one could make the case that neither Senators Rubio nor Paul would be experienced enough in 2016 to make a credible run. Further, an old maxim is a politician should never run for higher office until he has won reelection, at least once, to his current office. Both Rubio and Paul will be up for reelection in 2016. I believe that they should run for reelection to the Senate, and leave the presidency to those, like DeMint, who have more experience.

You do realize that Regan was president over 30 years ago? Why don’t you reach farther back and aim for a resurgence in Taft economics, or maybe model the new conservative economy on Grants’ platform? Maybe a James Buchanan model would be a fitting social and economic time period for you to restore?